When scaling successful campaigns to different countries the biggest stumbling block can be the language barrier. Unless you are a fluent or have a babelfish at hand the chances are that you are going to need some help to translate your ad copy.
There are a number of options and we have outlined each below in order of cost vs quality.
Google Translate – The cheap and quick solution
Googles translate engine is very good and is improving all the time. If you need to translate a single word for targeting options this will suffice. Bear in mind that it is not perfect at translating longer phrases and your ad copy will lose its human appeal.
One hour translate – The impersonal approach
Onehourtranslate.com offers a translation service which is cheap enough and very effective. You upload a document and it is assigned as a project to a contractor. A real person translates the text and sends it back to you. It is worth noting that they really should have called the service 24hr translate as some languages take longer than others to get done.
Private contractor – The personal approach
If you have a fair amount of work for a translator consider going somewhere like Odesk to hire a contractor. The advantage of this is you can chat to them and explain what you are trying to achieve with the ad copy and how the piece should come across.
